It turns out we’re not just kicking up a fuss about isolated incidents or seeing issues where there aren’t any.

Yep, it’s true: the majority of female mannequins represent underweight body types – meaning that the average or even the ‘healthy normal’ (according to BMI, which can be inaccurate) isn’t being represented by shops trying to sell us clothing.

A new study from the University of Liverpool and published in the Journal of Eating Disorders has found that the average female mannequin registers visually as ‘an extremely underweight human woman.’

(Picture: Simon Dawson/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Researchers assessed mannequins – asking objective viewers to match the mannequins to one real-life human out of ten different adults on the BMI scale – from 17 different shops in two major shopping districts in the UK and found that 100% of the female mannequins (yes, all of the mannequins they saw) would visually fit into the ‘underweight’ category.

In fact, the body size of the majority of the mannequins seen would be considered medically unhealthy were they real people.

When it came to male mannequins, however, just 8% were deemed to look underweight.

Now, it’s worth noting that the sample size used for the study is pretty small (two shopping districts don’t necessarily reflect the situation all over the UK) and it’s unclear whether the researchers walked by any stores specifically marketed towards plus-size women – that’s why we’re a little cautious about declaring that ALL mannequins would be considered underweight.

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But what is clear is that a significant portion of the mannequins we see are only representing underweight women. So it’s no wonder so many of us are feeling rubbish for not being tiny.

Dr Eric Robinson said: ‘Our survey of these two high streets in the UK produced consistent results; the body size of female mannequins represented that of extremely underweight human women.

‘Because ultra-thin ideals encourage the development of body image problems in young people, we need to change the environment to reduce emphasis on the value of extreme thinness.

‘We of course are not saying that altering the size of high street fashion mannequins will on its own ‘solve’ body image problems.

‘What we are instead saying is that presentation of ultra-thin female bodies is likely to reinforce inappropriate and unobtainable body ideals, so as a society we should be taking measures to stop this type of reinforcement.’